My granddad worked at the Acocks Green & Olton Laundry, and cycled there from Balsall Heath every day. When I was about 7-8, I used to go there with him occasionally during school holidays - we walked down to Stratford Rd and caught the 44A. I used to go out with one of the drivers in the big green vans. They were both Morris Commercial, pre-war OC 1590, and then a new extra van, FHA 142. It's good how things like those numbers stick for so long. They use to play solo after lunch in what passed for a canteen, and granddad told me not to tell his wife or anybody else. On some Sunday mornings he used to go in and do maintenance work and then have a swift one outside at the Dolphin while I had a half of shandy. Those were good, special days for me, but that poor man worked and worked, only to die less than a year after he retired. As it happened, I was on leave from the army and in contact with a former neighbour who told me, and so I went to his funeral.. he was the best of that lot.... by a country mile, or ten.